I went to the White River High School 30 Yr Class Reunion last night. This entry is copied from the WRHS 30 YR HS Reunion Event on Facebook, and will be also posted on my wall.

Had a blast last night. It caused me to remember how much I really enjoyed HS and how different Elementary and Jr. High were for me. I was harassedddd and bullied (pushed into lockers, tacks in my chair, and the COMMENTS…) But, when I first got to White River, I was welcomed and greeted with no thought that I was disabled. You guys treated me like a PERSON.

Everyone treated me like there was no disability. I was judged on other things, and I was accepted into theatre, managing the volleyball team, and Key Club (among other things that escape my recollection at the moment. You guys didn’t care that I walked funny, or that I took longer to get places. I was Dana, not “that freak who walks funny” or worse yet, “that retard”.

I was asked to Homecoming, I was asked out on other dates. You guys treated me as an “equal”, ignoring the canes, crutches, and the slow walking. You didn’t think I was retarded or even better, disabled, didn’t treat me as such, and I’m so glad to count each and everyone of you as a friend. I was Dana, I just happened to walk funny and need help with some things and I would ask for that help. And it was freely given. Sometimes too freely, as I had to beat some of you guys off with a stick when it looked like I needed help when I actually didn’t.

That too, I remember, with special fondness, even if I groaned at the time, because I thought I could do anything and really didn’t need help. EVERYONE needs help at sometime in their lives, I just needed it a lot sooner.

If I couldn’t do something, solutions were found so I could participate. I fondly remember going to basketball games and cheering the Hornets on. Working on the Volleyball team as Manager and getting my Letterman’s Jacket (which I still have). Learning to drive and having the school buy hand controls so they could teach me. Then selling me the hand controls when the year ended. THAT was very cool when the Kiwanis club bought the controls for me after the semester.

Tyler, my first service dog, I received from the Prison Pet Partnership Program. The program is located in the Women’s Correctional Center at Purdy, Washington. The program trains inmates that are lifers, meaning they are serving a life sentence. It makes NO sense to train an inmate that is going to be leaving prison in a few years, so they train those that are going to be in prison for the rest of their lives, or more probably, for 25 years or more.

I applied for a service dog through this program after I saw woman and her service dog. The dog was VERY well trained, and helped the woman in a variety of tasks. I was impressed, and the Program Director met me and said I was a good canidate for a service dog (or as they called them, Mobility Assistance dogs). Well, I signed up, and then sat and waited. And waited. Finally, Six years, later, I got the phone call. I was being matched with a young male Labrador Retriever, Tyler.

I was to report to the Women’s Correctional Center at Purdy for two weeks of training. Two weeks of half-day training, as they had found that many disabled couldn’t handle full-day training. I reported as requested and met Tyler’s inmate trainer, Trish, a young woman who’d assisted in a corner grocery store robbery (she waited out in the car), and the person with her had killed a man, but the way the Washington State law is written, because she was on the scene of the crime, she was charged with murder as well. Trish had already been at the Women’s Prison for at least 10 years when I met her. She was brash, rude, and loud. There is no privacy at the women’s prison.

I spent the first part of the day learning dog commands (there weren’t many), how to give a verbal commands and how to correct him. Once I was done with the training (only 3 days). I was left completely alone with him. With NO backup.

I called a friend of mine that trained her own service dog, with the help of a dog training place, Paws-Abilities, and she invited me there. Once there, I COMPLETELY retrained Tyler.

Four years later, we were out in public when he had jumped a guide dog on the bus. I decided right then and there to take him to the vet, but also to retire him immediately. The guide dog wasn’t harmed. But I was embarrassed, as I had trained Tyler from knowing the 3 commands he came with, and being dog and child aggressive, to knowing over 25 commands, and being safe around children and other dogs, although, I did, for my own piece of mind, keep an eye on him when he was around children and other dogs.

Today, I resumed doing a standing program. A standing program is where a person that normally uses a wheelchair, uses a device called a ‘standing table’ or ‘standing frame’, to get into an upright position and stand in one position for a length of time, slowly increasing the time they can tolerate being able to do so.

I just discovered my birthmother is on Facebook. I was playing Farmville and handing out gifts, when her name came up in the gifting window. I was shocked and I really shouldn’t have been.

She hasn’t talked to me in a few years… she searched for me when I was 21… having an agency contact my adoptive parents and disrupting our lives. Now she doesn’t contact me here on Facebook. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn’t know I was on Facebook, but not to contact me for over two years… good thing I have really fantastic ‘adoptive’ parents! I really don’t need her, but I’ll contact her and extend the olive branch.

I’m currently sitting in the lobby of the Sea-Tac Hilton attending Westercon. For those that don’t know, Westercon is a science fiction convention that travels up and down the West Coast, happening in a different city each year. The last time Seattle hosted Westercon was 10 years ago, and I attended that one too.

I usually don’t go to the conventions to get autographs, I usually go to the conventions to connect with friends that I only seee at conventions. I actually had a young man walk up to me yesterday, and introduce himself and then explain that he’d been a user on the BBS I used to run 12 years ago. Wow.

While I don’t get autographs, that doesn’t mean I don’t know any pros. I know quite a few pros, and I find it funny when fen (the plural of fan) stop and stare when a well known author will stop me in the lobby or hall of the hotel to say hi, or give me a hug. What I usually do at these conventions is help put them on. I started working at coventions with Rustycon 2 – where I volunteered and became the receipent of a “Volunteer” Extrodonaire” award

I’m starting to have trouble getting into/out of our van. Our van is wheelchair lift equipped. However, the door frame isn’t tall enough for me to ride in my wheelchair up the lift and then drive the wheelchair into the van. I have to get out of my wheelchair and climb into the front passenger seat to use the van, while Keith puts the wheelchair on the lift and then secures the wheelchair in the van with no one using it. I have to pull myself up using my arms into the seat, and I’ve started having trouble doing that. This is a recent development. I’m starting to fear that I’ll not be able to pull myself into the van and will lose my grip and fall. And it’s about a 3 to 5 foot drop to the ground (depending on if you’re standing or sitting).

This really scares me.

And if THAT weren’t enough, our van is starting to have mechanical issues. The control box for the lift mechanism is malfunctioning. Several times in the last 2 days, my wheelchair has been stuck in the air as Keith has jiggled switches to get the lift running again. The van is several years old, and lift equipped vans are expensive. This van was bought used, the original owner had died, and we got it very cheaply as a replacement for a brand-new lift equipped van that had been hit by an uninsured driver. As you might suspect, we didn’t get anywhere near the $50K+ or so that a new van would cost. We were extremely lucky to find this used van at the time.

I can’t afford to buy a new van or even a used van right now. I am on Medicare, and have an implanted medical device that requires filling with a drug that costs $8000 every 6 weeks. Medicare covers 80% of that, but I have to pay the other 20%. As you can imagine, finances are VERY tight. I DID have medical insurance last year, but the premiums were eating me alive, so I switched to a different insurance with a very cheap premium (read none), and then found out that my PCP (Primary Care Physician) didn’t take that insurance, and ONLY that insurance. Because of the way that the enrollment works and changing plans works if you’re on Medicare, I wasn’t able to switch to another insurance plan and ended up on normal Medicare, which means I pay 20% of all my medical bills, and that, unfortuantely, is a LOT.

I use a motorized wheelchair and a car would not be able to transport my wheelchair. I am basically homebound without a van, after the local transit company cut out paratransit service completely.

So, I am swallowing my pride, and admitting I need help in acquiring a van and I am asking for donations. I have a paypal account set up with the email address of paypal@danawheels.net.

I don’t know if there are any organizations out there that would donate me a van, but Keith seems to think so, so if someone has information on THAT, please leave me a message here, or on Facebook, or at danawheels@gmail.com.

THANK YOU in advance for reading this – I have posted this to my blog, Hire the Handicapped, They’re Fun to Watch, and crossposted this to Facebook. Permission is given to repost. Questions may be directed to danawheels@gmail.com.

It is not easy for me to ask for help. I wrestled with this, but having to struggle to get into/out of the van decided me when I missed the handle at the top of the door on the van recently. I wasn’t hurt, but it scared me.

Using a free registry scanning utility, it found 520 registry errors. However, I am a registered user of ZoneAlarm, which has a utility to repair the registry, so instead of buying an unfamiliar product, I’ll using ZoneAlarm’s utility, and hopfully, fix all the crashes and other problems I’ve been having. With the large number of registry errors, it doesn’t surprise me, unless the utility was overstating, because it was one of those utilities that cleaned up x amount of errors and then you had to buy it… we’ll see what Zone Alarm says. Zone Alarm is primarily a Virus protection product. The registry repair is an added thing.

When NASA retired the Space Shuttle fleet, they picked places for the shuttles to be shown. Seattle was in the bidding for one of the 4 shuttles, but didn’t make the cut, instead landing the Shuttle Trainer. People here lament the fact that we “lost”, but no, I think we won! The cities that will host actual shuttles, must display them away from the public (look but don’t touch), while WE, here in Seattle, will be able to climb into the shuttle trainer and play with it. It’s a mock up of a shuttle, built in the 1970’s, is made of plywood, but has all the systems that the shuttle used, for astronaut training. The only thing the trainer doesn’t have, are the wings.

This weekend, the nose and crew compartment are being flown to Seattle via NASA’s ‘Super Guppy’. Then only 3 more parts are needed to be shipped (the cargo bay and the stand for same). Then they will put it together, and it’ll go into a new gallery at the Museum of Flight.

Like I said above, I think Seattle got the best part of the picks. No, we didn’t land an actual shuttle, we landed something far better.

After having had my website Service Dogs and More! up for years, and years, it needs a major upgrade, and I finally was able to get FTP to behave so I could download the whole thing! I will be updating it slowly over the next several weeks, and adding some things I’ve been meaning to add for years. If you are a service dog user, and have suggestions you’d like to see on the site, drop me a line either at webmaster@danawheels.net or comment here, or on Facebook.